Experimental Rocket #2 Development

It's come to my attention via Kerbal Space Center's R&D department that in order to achieve orbit simply flying straight up isn't going to cut it; gravity is working directly against the vessel's acceleration and will just come straight back down.

Hipster glasses? Check. Hipster mustache? Check.

(Actually I know this from having played the game a lot already. Humor me.)

Instead, we'll be following a curved flight path, angling every 10 kilometers or so until the vessel is out of the lower atmosphere and can reach the speeds needed to sustain a continuous trajectory around Kerbin. Picture the rate you're falling and flying forward being equal to the curvature of the planet. I'd estimate around 2 kilometers per second at an altitude of 70-75km.

Science!

So, two things our next rocket needs to really ensure it can accomplish this speed and distance: more acceleration in the lower atmosphere and less weight later in the flight.  just adding more fuel tanks will hinder both. Our newly-developed components can tackle these issues, particularly solid rocket boosters and decouplers.

First of all, I've upgraded the Experimental Rocket with the new tanks. Same weight and capacity, just less parts.

This design series really needs a name. I'm rather partial to naming spaceships 'Thunder Road', so we'll call this the Thunder Road 1.

Now to refine this into the Thunder Road 2. The only parts to survive landing so far have been the command pod and the empty fuel tanks. It may as well ditch everything but the pod before landing. Placing a decoupling ring between the command pod and the fuel tanks adds an additional stage to the rocket and lets it forcefully separate components when activated.

A third stage can be added to provide more fuel tanks. When the tanks run out they can be discarded and leave less dead weight for the ship to push into space.

Finally, we'll add boosters to that stage to compensate for all that extra weight the first engine has to lift.

Unlike the liquid fuel engines, solid rocket fuel is a dense compound that burns quickly with a high thrust. The reaction is not very efficient however and cannot be stopped once ignited, thus the boosters will help out early on and then become useless. They will be discarded when the first stage decouples. 

I initially considered a pair of SRBs but opted for three of them for more oomph. Placing them away from the main fuselage should also avoid overheating issues. The next mission may reveal which of these need to be tweaked but the current design should work well.

The Thunder Road 2 is ready for launch. I'll just need a volunteer.